Take a look at all the posts on this site for "Pre-Production" "Casting" and "Producing." This post specifically is a list of resources for line producing and unit production managers in creating and producing short films.

Casting may be the most important thing a director does in prepping for a film shoot. If you're unsure about how to cast someone for a role, hire a casting director.

Casting Breakdown

Put out a casting breakdown for your project. You can either post this at school, email it out to actors you know, put it on social media where actors may see it, or even try posting it on a casting website such as Stage Source (requires subscription to be able to post).

Studio Version

Independent (Local) Version

The key to creating a casting breakdown is to post a sentence or two about each character in the project. This gives actors a chance to figure out if the audition would be worth their time. Remember that most actors take time out of their lives to work on short films for free. Show respect for them and their time.

NOTE: The independent version above (to the right) does not describe or list each role. I would recommend describing the characters you're looking for in order to mentally prepare your actors.

Pulling Sides (From Your Script)

Once you have a list of all the characters you need to cast in your film, now you need to pull scenes from your script for your actors to read as samples. You cannot have every actor read your entire script in the audition (that would take forever and be cruel to everyone involved…including you). Instead, pull just one or two scenes for each actor that would show their range.

Sample Scene Breakdowns

(Optional)

On the first page of each scene breakdown, make sure to include a brief summary of your overall project. Also include a brief synopsis of the scene. Tell the actors quickly what is happening, what the tone is, and any additional information they may need to perform to your expectations.

Setting up Your Audition

#1:You're going to need a space.

Choose a basic or bland location for your casting that is NOT your home. Remember that strangers are going to come to your casting call. You never know who will show up. And, you don't want everyone to know where you sleep.

​It is best to choose a location where there is a main room and then a hallway where actors can wait for their turn. The main room is where you will have actors run the scenes.

#2: You're going to need a friend.

When every actor shows up for your casting call, make sure there is someone there to check people in. When an actor shows up, they need to know (and always ask) multiple things:

Are they at the right audition?

Where do they park their cars?

Where is the bathroom?

Where are the sides?

Can they have a copy of the sides?

What time will they be able to audition?

An Audition Form gives actors something to do while they wait. You can ask them any number of questions. I previously shot a film about LGBT issues, so I asked my actors who arrived what their thoughts were on this issue. I was really impressed with the depth of what some actors shared.

There is so much work that goes into auditions and few people really do it audition right. You want actors to come and be impressed by the operation you're running. If you like them for a part, you want them to still be interested in working with you as a director.

A. Make a UNIQUE EMAIL ADDRESS for the film (or just for casting the film) B. Use an online APPOINTMENT MAKING APP where actors can sign-up for times​ C. Email people directly and sign them up in a spreadsheet of your own

MYMOVIETITLECASTING@GMAIL.COM

NOTE: The advantage to assigning audition slots for individual actors is so that you're not sitting around for three or four hours multiple nights a week when actors can only come at a specific time. This also shows your actors that you respect their time. Plan to have about five people come per half-hour.

#4: Have a Reader

Have someone else there to read through the scenes with the actors so you (the director) can be present and engaged in the actor's performance.

#5: Record the Auditions

Really basic recording of an audition will be super helpful. Later you can always look back at these and really get a sense of how your character will come to life.

#6: Give the Actor Notes (to see how they can make adjustments)

This person came in and gave you their time and attention. If you see promise in something they've given you then make sure to give a note or two for them to adjust their performance, only if they're close. Do not give mindless notes. This is an audition, not a rehearsal.

#7: End on a High Note!

Don't promise anyone anything! Just say, "Thank you for coming in, today. We'll be getting in touch with everyone by next week." Keep it upbeat!

Many think that it's easy to write an award-winning book, take a beautiful photograph, or making a blockbuster movie. But those people truly have no idea how hard any of these things are to do well.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

"Now rightly regarded as a classic, the glittering quality of MGM’s The Wizard Of Oz gives little clue to its fraught production process. Although Victor Fleming is widely credited as director, no fewer than five other directors were involved at various points in its making. Similarly, its script was credited to Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolff (such a fabulous name), but no fewer than 17 writers had an uncredited hand in it, among them poet Ogden Nash. The script was finally completed in late 1938, and shooting commenced. It was chaos. Directors were hired and then quickly relieved of duty. Miraculously, little (if any) of The Wizard Of Oz’s nightmarish production difficulties were apparent on the big screen – and unlike some other films on this list, it remains a timelessly entertaining fantasy."

The dog, Toto, was a troublemaker from the start and required take after take after take throughout production.

The actress playing the witch was burned badly during the munchkin scene.

The scene breakdown is a sheet that the Unit Production Manages and Assistant Directors use to make sure that every department is on the same page with what needs to be ready for each scene to be shot.

The schedule is a line-by-line explanation of what scenes are to be shot and in what order they will be covered. The schedule groups day scenes and night scenes as they will be reasonably shot.

The daily call sheet is what the Assistant Director puts together every night to announce the call times, locations, parking instructions, weather, and scenes to be shot the next day.

How to Schedule Low-Budget Short Films

This short video outlines how the template works. The overall goal is to simplify the Call Sheet process. Assistant Directors often spend hours after they go home each night to readjust the call sheet for everyone and send it out in an easy to read format. This system simplifies the process so the AD doesn't have to enter the information in over, and over, and over...

This video outlines exactly how to use the template for entering in breakdown information for each scene, and then how to adjust the Call Sheet and additional union forms as well. For our course, we will simply use the Breakdown Template, Cast Template, and the Call Sheet Templates (front and back).

16th Century painters used dark rooms with a pinhole in the wall or project landscapes onto canvas. They would wait for the light to be right and shine through. The image is cast upside down and artists sketched out the shapes.

"Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where it is reproduced, inverted (thus upside-down), but with color and perspective preserved."

Camera Obscura means:

Camera = "Room"

Obscura = "Dark"

The First Photograph

The first permanent image (Heliograph) using a Camera Obscura and white bitumen it required 8 hours to expose.

"When the craze for the newly invented art of lithography swept France in 1813, it attracted Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's attention. His trials with lithography led to what Niépce later termed heliography and resulted in the earliest known surviving photograph made in a camera, which he produced in 1826 or 1827." -- Harry Ransom Center

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

Born 1765 in France

In 1793, Niepce and his brothers discussed the possibility of using light make images.

Experiments began in 1816

The brothers also worked on building a combustion engine.

The Daguerreotype

"Daguerreotype as a process was the first publicly announced photographic process, and for nearly twenty years, it was the one most commonly used. It was invented by Louis Daguerre and introduced worldwide in 1839."

"The earliest reliably dated photograph of people, taken by Daguerre one spring morning in 1838 from the window of the Diorama, where he lived and worked. It bears the caption huit heure du matin (8 a.m.). [...] The long exposure time (about ten or twelve minutes) meant that moving traffic cannot be seen; however, the bootblack and his customer at lower left remained still long enough to be distinctly visible."

Henry Fox Talbot developed the Calotype in 1840. This process allowed for paper negatives and positives.

The Collodion Process

Scott Archer

"In 1851, Scott Archer proposes "Collodion" process. Collodion (a solution of nitrocellulose in a mixture of ethyl alcohol and ethyl ether) forms a binder for silver iodide on glass. Exposure and processing is performed immediately after coating plate.

​Scott Archer did not patent the process and died in poverty. Two versions of this process were "Ambrotype" and "Tintype." Exposure was about 10 seconds. The Collodion process greatly expanded photography and brought everyone into contact with its results." -- Ted Photographics

"Fredrick Scott Archer invented the Wet Collodion Process or Wet Plate Process. An advantage of this process is that it was much faster and reduced the exposure time to two or three seconds. Also, the cost was lower than the other processes.

A disadvantage [to the wet plate process] is that the glass plates had to be exposed and developed while it was still wet with collodion. This means that dark rooms would have to be portable. Also, the glass plates were so fragile and broke easily."

The Color Process

Recorded discovery of color photographic process: "[Thomas] Sutton was the photographer for James Clerk Maxwell's pioneering 1861 demonstration of color photography. In a practical trial of a thought-experiment Maxwell had published in 1855, Sutton took three separate black-and-white photographs of a multicolored ribbon, one through a blue filter, one through a green filter, and one through a red filter."

​"Using three projectors equipped with similar filters, the three photographs were projected superimposed on a screen. The additive primaries variously blended to reproduce a gamut of color. The photographic materials available to Sutton were mainly sensitive to blue light, barely sensitive to green and practically insensitive to red, so the result was only a partial success." -- Source

George Eastman and his company Kodak invent roll film in 1885, which meant photographers no longer had to carry around undeveloped slide negatives or develop their plates in the field as they shot.

The Brownie Camera comes out in 1901 and changes the market of photography forever. This device meant that photographers (anyone) could take a picture by just pressing one button. This meant that you didn't have to accommodate for shutter speed, aperture, iso, etc. The camera did all the work, and so did the employees back at the Kodak plant who processed all the rolls.